Does ethnic-racial socialization matter? A within-person analysis of racial discrimination and sleep health among Black and Latinx emerging adults.

OBJECTIVES: Emerging work suggests that racism-related stressors may contribute to adverse sleep health, yet little is known about how culturally relevant resources may influence the relationship between racism-related stressors and adverse sleep health. The aim of this study was to examine associations between weekly reports of racial hassles and young adults' sleep health (i.e., sleep onset latency, total sleep time, sleep quality) and to determine whether various forms of parental ethnic-racial socialization would moderate these associations. METHODS: Participants were 141 college students (Mage = 20.7 years, standard deviation (SD) = 1.22, 70% female) who identified as either Black (n = 88; 62.4%) or Latinx (n = 53; 37.6%). Participants completed an initial 1.5-hour assessment in the laboratory and 4 weekly sleep diary surveys (assessed sleep health and depressive symptoms). RESULTS: Weekly racial hassles are related to greater sleep onset latency, decreased total sleep time, and poorer sleep quality. The promotion of mistrust and cultural socialization significantly moderated associations between weekly racial hassles and sleep onset latency and total sleep time, respectively. CONCLUSIONS: These results provide supportive evidence that parental ethnic-racial socialization practices, a preemptive cultural resource, may be an understudied mechanism in sleep health research. Future research is needed to clarify the role of parental ethnic-racial socialization in promoting sleep health equity among youth and young adults.

"When the political becomes personal": evaluation of an elected president, election distress, and college students' psychological well-being.

Objective: Although emerging adults' civic engagement is generally associated with positive outcomes, concerns about an elected candidate's leadership ability and the implications of administrative turnover may negatively impact youths' well-being. Using longitudinal data collected during the 2016 election cycle, the current study examined whether negative evaluation of a presidential candidate-who is eventually elected-may be indirectly associated with college students' psychological well-being due to increased election distress.Participants: 286 college-attending emerging adults (Mage= 20, SDage = 1.40) participated in the current study.Methods: Path models linking evaluation of Trump's leadership ability (pre-election) to psychological well-being (approx. 100 days in office) via election distress (presidential inauguration) were computed.Results: Reporting lower confidence in Trump's leadership ability prior to the election was associated with greater election distress 3 months post-election, and in turn, poorer psychological well-being 6 months post-election.Conclusion: Findings underscore the importance of centering college students' well-being within a broader sociopolitical context.

Exploring the associations between discrimination, coping, skin tone, and the psychosocial health of young adults of color.

Although valuable strides have been made in linking racial and ethnic discrimination to health outcomes, scholars have primarily used between-person methodological approaches, which assess the implications of reporting high or low mean levels of discrimination. Alternatively, within-person approaches assess the implications of intraindividual variation, or acute changes, in an individual's exposure to discrimination. These approaches pose two fundamentally different questions about the association between discrimination and health, and empirical work that disaggregates these effects remains scarce. Scholars have also called for research exploring whether sociocultural factors-such as race-related coping and skin tone-contour these associations. To address gaps in extant literature, the current study examined 1) how an individual's average level of exposure to discrimination (between-person) and weekly fluctuations in these encounters (within-person) relate to psychosocial health and 2) whether race-related coping (confrontational and passive coping) and skin tone moderate these associations. Analyses were conducted using weekly diary data from African American and Latinx young adults (n = 140). Findings indicated that reporting higher mean levels of exposure to discrimination and encountering more discrimination than usual on a given week were both associated with poorer psychosocial health. Results also suggest that the efficacy of young adults' coping mechanisms may depend on their skin tone and the nature of the discriminatory events encountered.

Feasibility, Acceptability, and Preliminary Efficacy of an App-Based Meditation Intervention to Decrease Firefighter Psychological Distress and Burnout: A One-Group Pilot Study.

BACKGROUND: Firefighters are often exposed to occupational stressors that can result in psychological distress (ie, anxiety and depression) and burnout. These occupational stressors have only intensified with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and will likely persist in the postpandemic world. OBJECTIVE: To address occupational stressors confronting firefighters, we pilot tested a novel, cost-effective, smartphone app-based meditation intervention created by Healthy Minds Innovations that focused on mindfulness (awareness) training along with practices designed to cultivate positive relationships (connection), insight into the nature of the self (insight), and a sense of purpose in the context of challenge (purpose) with a sample of professional firefighters from a large metropolitan area in southwestern United States. METHODS: A total of 35 participants were recruited from a closed online group listserv and completed the self-guided 10-unit meditation app over the course of 10 days, at 1 unit per day. We assessed anxiety symptoms, depression symptoms, burnout, and negative affect as well as saliva diurnal cortisol rhythm, an objective indicator of stress-related biology, before and after use of the meditation app. RESULTS: This study demonstrated the meditation app was both feasible and acceptable for use by the majority of firefighters. We also found significant reductions in firefighters' anxiety (P=.01), burnout (P=.05), and negative affect (P=.04), as well as changes in cortisol diurnal rhythm, such as waking cortisol (P=.02), from before to after use of the meditation app. CONCLUSIONS: Our study findings call for future research to demonstrate the efficacy of this meditation app to reduce psychological distress and burnout in firefighters.

Within-person associations between racial microaggressions and sleep among African American and Latinx young adults.

Emerging work suggests that experiences of racial discrimination may impact overall sleep health; however, there is limited work on the link between racial microaggressions and sleep. Using weekly diary data, the current study examined young adults' weekly reports of racial microaggressions across 4 weeks, and their relation to weekly reports of sleep-onset latency, reduced total sleep time and poorer sleep quality. This design allowed us to examine how within-person fluctuations in racial microaggressions corresponded with young adults' sleep. Data were collected among 140 African American (62.1%) and Latinx (37.9%) college students attending a Midwestern University. Students were randomly selected to participate; they were, on average, 20.70 years old (SD = 1.22) and the majority were female (69.3%). Participants self-reported their racial microaggressions and sleep behaviours (i.e. sleep-onset latency, total sleep time and sleep quality) each week (across 4 weeks). Multilevel modelling showed significant within-person effects of racial microaggressions for sleep onset and sleep quality, but not for total sleep duration. Specifically, on weeks that individuals reported increases in racial microaggressions, they reported greater sleep-onset duration and poorer sleep quality. The current findings provide preliminary evidence that racial microaggressions are associated with sleep-onset durations and sleep quality among African American and Latinx young adults. Although racial microaggressions are often considered subtle, they may impact the sleep health of young adults in marginalized groups.